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Boarding Party Bug

SystemSystem Member, NoReporting Posts: 178,019 Arc User
edited January 2010 in PC Gameplay Bug Reports
Yesterday, I was helping a friend do a mission that he hadn't done yet. It was Doomsday Machine, however it's not the mission that is bugged. Anyhow, 3 Neg'vhars attacked and I had recently forgot they updated the ship to use boarding parties. That's fine, except that when you are not ready they all board you. Effectively locking out your systems and weapons right.

The problem is. When you get hit by a bunch of them, they throw your cooldowns up to ridiculously high timers. I had over 1h cooldowns on my weapons, (torpedoes and phasers) Also, when you die, and respawn, it doesn't reset. There is no way to reset the timers. Not logging off, not requipping for anything stops the timers. Put it this way, if you get hit with this bug. You can fly around sector space and all that and not really be able to play the game for about an hour. Even worse, if you beam down to a planet or something, or a station. The timers seem to stop counting down. This is an absolutely horrible game changing bug. It's the worst bug in the game i've encountered so far. The parameters on boarding party and how it work should probably be looked at and honestly changed completely. First of all there should be a limit to how long they back up your cooldowns. 2nd. If you go to sector space or whatever, those cooldowns should automatically be reset. I basically couldn't play the game last night for over an hour. A couple friends wanted to try out some newer missions and I couldn't join them because of this bug. Anyone else run into it?
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Comments

  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Im not sure if this is working as the devs intended but I had finally got my timers reset after a similar episode and was doing the same mission when I got hit with boarding parties. From what I can tell it seems that instead of each hit overwriting the other and resetting the duration, it adds to the total duration so after multiple hits you can have timers on cool down of 5-6 minutes. It would be interesting to see what cryptics position on this is. I tend to play zoomed out so I can see ships around me and the little boarding party shuttles are hard to spot and target unless you're zoomed in close.

    i submitted a ticket on this earlier today and I hear a lot of people had this problem after the patch last night so hopefully they're working on it.

    Does the same thing happen in pvp?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I just got hit by this today, but didn't think it was a bug. Luckily, the mission I was doing was saving a science station against 4 waves of enemies so I had help from station runabouts. After the mission, I was sitting in sector space for 3 min waiting for my timers to finish counting. Please look at this dev's!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    bstiff wrote:
    Im not sure if this is working as the devs intended but I had finally got my timers reset after a similar episode and was doing the same mission when I got hit with boarding parties. From what I can tell it seems that instead of each hit overwriting the other and resetting the duration, it adds to the total duration so after multiple hits you can have timers on cool down of 5-6 minutes. It would be interesting to see what cryptics position on this is. I tend to play zoomed out so I can see ships around me and the little boarding party shuttles are hard to spot and target unless you're zoomed in close.

    i submitted a ticket on this earlier today and I hear a lot of people had this problem after the patch last night so hopefully they're working on it.

    Does the same thing happen in pvp?

    If you respawn and then join the fight again, they will send more at you. I got my timers up to over an hour doing that because I didn't quite understand what was going on. Either way, i can see boarding parties becoming a very annoying ability in PvP and other things in general. The ability really needs to be looked at. The timers they stick on you like you said, don't rewrite over each other.. they Just stack, and stack, and stack, I'm sure you could go up to a day or more if you just sat there and kept getting them.

    It's a pretty terrible bug, and honestly I had a great opinion of the game, and for some reason, that left a really bad taste in my mouth. Other than that I love the game, but that bug has to seriously be fixed before launch or there will be a TON of people complaing about it. Seeing as more playrs will be exposed to the boarding parties by those ships in the rank 11-20 mark and higher.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I just had all of my weapons disabled for 30 minutes during a fleet action because 8 boarding parties attacked me at the same time. This was INCREDIBLY frustrating since I was actually doing great and expected to rank in the top for the first time. As was previously stated, dieing or logging out does not reset the timer. This cannot even be prevented since a phaser bank must complete firing before you change targets, so it is impossible to destroy all 8 boarding parties before they get to you.

    Now I can't play the game for half an hour...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    i can't bet one cruser now because as soon as it send out its bording parties thats it all my cooldowns have what looks like an epileptic fitr and then if i survive that i have stupidly long cool downs its unplayable atm
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I just had all of my weapons disabled for 30 minutes during a fleet action because 8 boarding parties attacked me at the same time. This was INCREDIBLY frustrating since I was actually doing great and expected to rank in the top for the first time. As was previously stated, dieing or logging out does not reset the timer. This cannot even be prevented since a phaser bank must complete firing before you change targets, so it is impossible to destroy all 8 boarding parties before they get to you.

    Now I can't play the game for half an hour...

    It's the worst bug I've seen so far. A lot of other bugs I've encountered I've understood that it's beta and I've written many tickets for them. However, this is a "game changing" bug in my opinion. I mean, it seriously hinders the gaming experience for me and I feel it would do the same for others. I'm sure it works the same way in PvP because the mechanics are the same. Think of this, somebody tractor beams you or uses that ability that disables your ship for a few seconds. Then throws over two boarding teams. The game is over for you not just for that fight, but for many fights after that. This can't be how they intended it to work. It's flat out broken and I seriously hope they fix it. If you try to rejoin the fight, the timers keep stacking. I've seen people complain of 30 mins and more. I'll be honest like I said, I didn't really understand quite what was going on. So I kept respawning in a mission to try and complete it. Only did I find out the boarding parties that they throw at you, (which can be like 8 or so in a fleet action) STACK, and stack, and stack. I'm sure there is no limit to how high it could go.

    You could effectively be disabled for a few hours or more with this bug. I don't think when you log out, the timers even keep counting down either. It's very very bad. Please look into this Devs. Also, when you go down to a planet/station/etc. The timer countdown seems to stop until you get back into space... Which is also very lame.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    TImers don't count down if you log out. I had like 45 min on my timers this morning and had to sit in sector space until they wore off. It's weird it doesn't go away if you die/respawn I think that reset most other things.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    This is too ridiculous. If people have to sit logged in for hours without being able to do anything, Cryptic thinks they will want to play this game?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    This is too ridiculous. If people have to sit logged in for hours without being able to do anything, Cryptic thinks they will want to play this game?

    well I guess they figure it will give the pvpers something to exploit for a while.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I have this bug also. Currently waiting for the cooldowns hehe :) All we can do is bug report it and wait or move on.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    if you get done by a boarding party there is only 1 way to get round it afaik.

    this is that you ohave the BO ability "Tactial Team" - think that the name of it.
    This will basically send your "security" officers on a search and destroy mission and remove the enemy onboard.

    Due to this bug it may be handy to have spare BO that has this skill even if you dont normally use it, you can just switch him/her in
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    i cant believe with all the posts on here about it and all the Ingame Bug reports they still have not said anything about this or addressed it in the patch earlier ..... but then again they got better stuff to do like eat free taco's and go to the star trek convention in san francisco.... guess there saying sod the game
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I was thoroughly displeased when I encountered this bug. But, I'm sure they'll fix it soon. :p
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Wow, this is a major issue...I'm glad i've been targeting those lil buggers before they get to me, and as I prefer long range (lol 9KM) engagements, I have time to eliminate those shuttles
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Lonewolf69 wrote:
    i cant believe with all the posts on here about it and all the Ingame Bug reports they still have not said anything about this or addressed it in the patch earlier ..... but then again they got better stuff to do like eat free taco's and go to the star trek convention in san francisco.... guess there saying sod the game

    check the patch ntoes for the 23rd.. it states that this is a Known Issue so I assume that means they trying to fix it.

    So they already stated about it, just not in the threads (which there are a lot of).
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Corran2000 wrote:
    if you get done by a boarding party there is only 1 way to get round it afaik.

    this is that you ohave the BO ability "Tactial Team" - think that the name of it.
    This will basically send your "security" officers on a search and destroy mission and remove the enemy onboard.

    Due to this bug it may be handy to have spare BO that has this skill even if you dont normally use it, you can just switch him/her in


    yeah you've posted this multiple times. read the threads it doesn't work that's the problem.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Corran2000 wrote:
    check the patch ntoes for the 23rd.. it states that this is a Known Issue so I assume that means they trying to fix it.

    So they already stated about it, just not in the threads (which there are a lot of).

    they also stated that zoning or dying removes the effect which it doesn't.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    This ability, even post fix is OP. If one of the 4-5 shuittles touches you they put your phasers on a 1+ minute CD. At which point killing any remaining shuttles is impossible. So that one shuttle keeps bumping up against your disabling more systems and refreshing the timers on everything they've already disabled. This means that in about 10 seconds you have no shields, no guns, no torps, and no special abilities. If you're soloing that's game over. And when you respawn, you have to wait for the 2 minute timers to expire. Now that's a hell of a lot better than 45+ minutes yesterday, but it's still pretty game ending when fights barely last 2 minutes.

    There are 4 shuttles and they cover 4-5km that is the average distance between ships fast. There's no way to get all the shuttles all the time, and any missed one is a respawn. Apparently I'm going to have to ditch my current tact BO for one that specifically has the tact team ability and hope that can clear all the debuffs. I'm guessing that each use of the ability will only clear one random debuff. Then I'll have to pray that it restores my phasers so I can get the remaining shuttles otherwise they'll just bump my timers back up.

    I have boarding parties and I know they sure as hell aren't that effective. I'm lucky if I get a 2 second window where the enemies shields are down.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I just had all of my weapons disabled for 30 minutes during a fleet action because 8 boarding parties attacked me at the same time. This was INCREDIBLY frustrating since I was actually doing great and expected to rank in the top for the first time. As was previously stated, dieing or logging out does not reset the timer. This cannot even be prevented since a phaser bank must complete firing before you change targets, so it is impossible to destroy all 8 boarding parties before they get to you.

    Now I can't play the game for half an hour...

    Same here, not only are my abilities down for 30 minutes, but absolutely NONE of my weapons work at all. No beams, no cannons, nothing!!!

    That to me is a critical bug.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    The answer i found to combat shuttles is to deploy mines they auto navigate to them and destroy most of the shuttles and your phasers finish off the rest of them.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Clarkeh wrote: »
    The answer i found to combat shuttles is to deploy mines they auto navigate to them and destroy most of the shuttles and your phasers finish off the rest of them.


    Ace- "Sir, I don't understand, who needs a knife in a nuke fight anyway? All you have to do is push a button. Sir."...
    Zim - "put you hand on that wall trooper."
    Ace - " Sir?"
    Zim - "PUT YOU HAND ON THAT WAAL!"
    *throws knife*
    Zim - "the enemy cannot push a button if you disable his hand.........MEDIC!


    You can't use the mines if their disabled.

    For Sergent Zim trueisms- Zim
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    So is it correct that the only options/work-around currently are pervent the boarding parties from landing (via mines or shooting them in-flight) or with a Bridge Officer with the Tatical Team power?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I had some Klingon battleship launch a ton of boarding parties at me. It wasn't long before the my shields and weapons went offline. Well I did get my shields and engines back on, but my weapons didn't come back. I had to go buy and use a totally new set of weapons just to be able to work. I tried all kinds of stuff to get rid of the timers. I had to go all the way back to Space dock then unequip and re-equip all my weapons. I did decide to buy some new weapons, but I need new shields and some kind of defense to the boarding parties. I wish my boarding parties did that much damage. I can't get all of that done. Also, I wish we could take a pve ship if we send a boarding party over.

    I do think this issue needs to be fixed very quickly. You just can't play like this.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I had this boarding party thing happen last night. I had never noticed it before because I always destroyed the shuttles, assuming they would do something very very bad. But last night my targeting was off and they got me for 20 mins of cooldowns. Once they get your weapons, there is nothing you can do but have the timers go up and up until you get destroyed.

    In a solo situation you can prevent this happening by keeping the enemy ship at a distance. I don't know exactly how close the ship has to be to send parties, but when I kept it at 8km+, no parties were ever launched.

    Perhaps abilities like Engineering Team are supposed to help given that they "repair disabled systems." Unfortunately, they did nothing to reduce the cooldowns. I feel the same as another post above: it really made be question whether I can play this game if this bug doesn't go away SOON. If it isn't a bug, well, I don't see how the game can be played by anyone! No one wants to sit around for 20-30-40+ minutes unable to do anything in space except travel the map.

    I enjoy the game, but this really hit me hard!
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Use repulsive tractor beam with your science officer (BO skill) and the bording shuttle will be destroy, it also works for mine. There s no need to lock them just active the skill before they get to close.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    vaxor wrote: »
    Use repulsive tractor beam with your science officer (BO skill) and the bording shuttle will be destroy, it also works for mine. There s no need to lock them just active the skill before they get to close.

    Not a solution to the bug...

    As Agent K said "This one is an example of "go home and do it again.""
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    I had hoped that doing a ground mission during the cool down would help, but the timers don't move at all unless you're in your ship. This is a very serious issue that needs fixed soon. It has ruined the last weekend of beta for me since I can't fight at all.
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Wow Cryptic, still haven't fixed this yet huh? yeah I guess we've only been flooding the Bug forums for 3 days straight, what's the schedule, peek at it once a week?
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    Switching out weaps does work, so I have gone to carrying 2 sets and running from all Boarding parties on sight... Like a panicked school girl...
  • Archived PostArchived Post Member Posts: 2,264,498 Arc User
    edited January 2010
    i see people complaning about this in "zone" chat durring the Klingon Scout Force fleet action. i have run this mission a few times and the spam about BP being OP is madding.

    1.) SHOOT THE BP SHUTTLES - they have no health and even t1 turrit will one shot them, and EVERYONE should target them once they show up reguardless if they are heading for you or not

    2.) there is a tatical BO power that reduces the debuff durration - escorts have three tatical BO powers, use one slot for this power and you will be fine, and call out in local if you need to be cleard of the debuff

    3.) SHOOT THE BP SHUTTLES - even if they connect, still shoot them off, the durration of the debuff depends on how many hit you, and how long they are attatched to your ship. if your cooldown is somthing over 2mins, you must have let 10 connect, and you didnt shoot them down even atter they landed.

    4.) USE EVASIVE MANUVERS - if you cant kill the BP shuttles b4 they reach you, run from them...

    realy the skill is not op, only reason your getting locked out for more then two mins is because you didnt SHOOT THE BP SHUTTLES. if Cryptic reduce the efectivness of BP it will make them less usfull in anything smaller then Fleet Actions, as well as making the BO power that clears the debuff usless

    also only the Negvars launch BP, just try to keep some distance between you and the Neg. your wepons do the same damage reguarless of the range from target. so theres no reason to be up close in the first place. (unless they spawn ontop of you, in which case use evasive manuvers to get distance)
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